


Dindirindin

by BardicRaven



Series: Songs from the Choir Loft [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Birds, F/M, Gen, Inspired by Music, Lovers to Friends, Medieval, Nightingale - Freeform, Supernatural Elements, song-fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 13:29:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16811581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardicRaven/pseuds/BardicRaven





	1. Je me levé un bel maitin, (I arose one fine day,)

I woke to find the nightmare had followed me into my day. Was my day, and all the days to come. It was true – my father had betrothed me to the richest man in the village, without a care for the fact that my heart belonged to another.

Not that I had really expected it to be any different – daughters were to be disposed of as their fathers willed, and that was the end of it. Some lucky few found their heart’s desire in their husbands, but many more did not.

And it looked as tho’ I would be one of the latter.

I rose and dressed quickly – I must send a message to my lover, before we were discovered. The old man I’d been betrothed to wouldn’t care that his bride was not a virgin on her wedding day – it would save him the trouble of deflowering me himself – but for my lover and I to continue? That would be an insult I knew he would not forgive. And better far that he not know the name of the young man who’d captured my heart, the young man I’d willingly given myself to, so as to know the joys of love in case I were not to find them later. Better he not know, so that we could all pretend. Pig’s blood on the sheets and a promise kept, and all would be content.

Except for me, but then, I was a daughter, so my opinion did not matter. And neither did my lover’s, for all he was a man. He was someone of less account than any of us in the village, for all he worked to better himself and prove himself worthy both of my love and of my hand in marriage. He was not there yet, and now our time had run out. It was no use protesting to my father – he’d had his heart set on this match for years. The only miracle, which I had prayed for every day to the Virgin, was that he’d waited this long.

But now, my prayers had failed me, and the only thing left to do was go to the meadow and tell my lover the truth, before he heard it from all the gossips in the village.


	2. matineta per la prata. (and spent the morning in the meadow.)

I hurried down the dusty path to the meadow, to the grove of trees where we’d spent so much time together, kissing, hugging, pledging that we would wait for one another. I was early, but I did not want to wait for my father to arise and prevent me from leaving the house, as he surely would if I had waited.

The sun beat down on the green grass all around, but there was no sign of anyone. I continued to wait, knowing he would come eventually.

Except that he did not. Whether he had already heard, or something had detained him, I knew not, but I also knew that I could stay no longer. I picked up my skirts and rose to go.


	3. Encontré le ruyseñor, que cantaba so la rama, dindirindin. (I heard the nightingale singing on the bough, dindirindin.)

As I began to leave the little grove that had been the site of so much happiness for us, a bird called out above my head. I stopped, looked up and saw the ruyseñor, the bird they called the nightingale, singing mightily from a branch, belying the sadness in my heart with his cheerful song.

“Ruyseñor,” I called out in the fanciful way I had as a child, when I believed that all the birds and animals could talk to me and I to them, each in our own way, and we would be understood. “Ruyseñor,” I said again, when he stopped his song to look at me with first one bright eye and then another. “Ruyseñor, I have something I’d like to ask of you. Something very important.” He stood on his branch and watched me, unafraid, as if he were waiting for me to continue.


	4. "Ruyseñor, le ruyseñor,facteme aquesta embaxata, (Nightingale, oh nightingale, do this errand for me,)

Emboldened by his waiting, I continued, somewhere in my heart of hearts beginning to think that he could actually do this thing for me and warn my lover not to come looking for me any more, keep us safe until such time as we could be together again. “O ruyseñor, please do me this errand.” He waited, watching still.


	5. “Y digalo a mon ami: que je ya só maritata, dindirindin." (“Tell my lover that I am already married. Din-di-rin-din.”)

I took a deep breath, feeling in my heart that it was already over, that I was already walking through the streets of our town a married woman, shackled to a man I neither loved nor desired, prey to his lusts and his whims until the day that le Bon Dieu separated us for good, then found my courage return as I let it out. I was not married yet, and while that was to be my fate, still, I knew of this man, this _old_ man, and knew that la Virgen Marie would not let us stay married long.

“Ruyseñor, please go to my lover, the one I adore above all others,” I sent him a picture of my lover as he’d stood in the meadow, pledging his love to me all that time ago. “Please go to him and tell him there is no hope for us – I am to be married tomorrow and he must stay away, for the man I am to be married to is wealthy and my father is powerful in the villages.” The last he already knew, but I felt that it did no harm to remind him of this.

We’d talked on more than one occasion, of what we might do if my father chose to have me married before my lover was ready to approach him and speak of marrying me himself. We’d thought about running away, but the truth was – there was no place for us to go. My father, while not wealthy, was known in these mountains as one who could find or arrange anything, and was well-thought of for those reasons, tho’ also feared for the very same.

No-one in the villages anywhere around would help us, his daughter and a lover, to disobey the orders and wishes of my father, and there was no place else for us to go. So with reluctance, we’d let those dreams go for the fairy-tales they were, and instead dreamed of a short marriage and a reuniting once I was a widow and could marry where I pleased.

Even a young herder, who would by that time be wealthy enough in his own right that asking me would be no shame on either of us.

But for now, that meant that we must wait, that tomorrow, I would put on the mantilla of a married woman, cover my hair forevermore, go and wait on my old husband until the day he left me and I could once again return to the meadow, to my lover and to the ruyseñor.

We both left the meadow then – me and the ruyseñor. I turned my steps to the village, while the ruyseñor… flew off in the direction of my lover’s house. I paused for a moment, watching him as he flew away. Would he, could he…? I did not know, but my footsteps as I turned and went back to the village were far lighter than they’d been when I’d come.

What would happen next would be for le Bon Dieu and la Virgen Marie to decide, but if a miracle could happen a thousand years ago in a desert, then surely, it could happen here as well. Feathers in another form, an angel with different wings.


End file.
